


For Memories

by valedecems (orphan_account)



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Chance Meetings, Doctor Martha Jones, Episode AU: s08e01 Deep Breath, Hospital, Post-Regeneration (Doctor Who), Regeneration Sickness (Doctor Who), Reminiscing, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:07:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22656742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/valedecems
Summary: The last thing Martha Jones expected when she visited Royal Hope Hospital for the first time in years was talk of a volatile, unstable man claiming his name was 'The Doctor'.
Kudos: 46





	For Memories

**Author's Note:**

> Slightly AU in that Twelve regenerated alone. He still had a run-in with a T-Rex, however it didn't end up swallowing the TARDIS.

“Where is she?” The Scottish man shouted.

In the middle of London stood a wild-eyed man in a suit that, once upon a time, may have looked eccentrically stylish. As of the present day, however, it hung off him in all the wrong places. The tears in the shirt and the singed hem of the dark tweed jacket weren’t helping his plight. As was typical of the public local to the English capital, his shout was, for the most part, ignored.  
“Where’s who, mate?” A man chuckled. Whether he wasn’t used to the incessant ramblings of strange men or he simply aimed to be entertained was unclear, but the smirk on his face told him that the truth likely lied in the latter.  
“My lady friend,” the man replied, rolling his ‘r’. For a brief moment, his face twisted into a wide grin, interrupted by jerks of his head in all the directions his neck would allow him to stretch to.  
“Yeah?” The chuckle evolved into a laugh. “What’s she look like, ‘en?”  
The man’s eyes fixated on the stranger’s, his sudden stillness bringing with it an aura of disquiet. “About forty-five metres tall,” he spoke slowly and with purpose, as though the idea of what he was proposing was in any way anchored in the truth. “Lots of teeth.” He opened his mouth and pointed at his pearly whites. “Like these, but… Lots. And sharp.” The humour the stranger found in the situation was dissipating as he realised that this man was steadfast in his belief that he was searching for what sounded like a dinosaur.  
“Right, okay, good luck with that, pal,” he lowered his sunglasses from their place perched on his forehead to cover his face, attempting to hide his growing anxiety, and made to walk away, but the man grabbed at his shoulders and stared directly in his eyes. Strangely, his eyebrows began to dance, and he jerked back.  
“Who is that man?” He asked, shocked. In a swift motion, he snatched the sunglasses from his face and stared at himself in the darkened lenses. “Your sunglasses have developed a fault. They’re _furious_. I would be too! It’s overcast, why are you wearing _sunglasses_?”  
“Can I have them back, please?” The man asked shakily.  
“No. No. No, have you seen this face before?” He jabbed a finger at the darkened visors.  
“I’ve never met you in my life,” he reached for the glasses, which were jerked away from his grasp. back to making intense eye contact with the stranger.  
“I think I have,” the man’s voice softened considerably, and he switched back to making intense eye contact with the stranger. “Why are you doing that? It’s annoying.”  
“Doing what?”  
“You’re going all dark and… Fizzy. Stop that. It’s very distracting. I’m trying to th-“

He dropped like a stone.

* * *

"Oliver!" Martha called out.

The last time Martha had been in this hospital was when she met the Doctor. The meeting felt like aeons away, and yet the familiar building brought with it ghostly apparitions of their encounter with - what was it called? - the Plasmavore. Regardless of the memories etched into the walls, she was ecstatic to see the friends she had made during her residency.  
"Martha Jones," Oliver Morgenstern's appearance was evidence enough of the gaps between their meetings. Once light brown hair was considerably thinner and streaked with wild white and grey hairs, the corners of his eyes adorned with crows feet. "God, you haven't changed a bit."  
"Neither have you," Martha complimented him back. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"  
"God, you haven't been back since..." Oliver pointedly turned his eyes toward the ceiling. "What have you been up to? A little birdie told me you were working for UNIT."  
"That's top-secret," she teased. "And even if it wasn't, it's not true any more."   
Oliver raised his eyebrows, but chose not to press her for comment. Instead, he focused his efforts on the ring he spotted on her finger. "You got married?"  
"Very observant, Doctor Morgenstern," her praise took on a playful tone. "Yeah. His name's Mickey."  
"Where did you two meet?"  
"God, you're like a schoolgirl," she widened her eyes, stalling as she considered the appropriate answer to such a question. "We had a mutual friend." She looked around the reception of the hospital. "It's quiet, isn't it? No more interesting occurrences since I left?"  
"You know, you say that..." Oliver's eyes lit up. "About twenty minutes ago, this guy was brought in. Fainted in the middle of London. The chap who called him in said he was delirious."  
"Yeah?" She asked.  
"I shouldn't be telling you this," he winced.  
"No, you shouldn't," she raised an eyebrow. "Isn't going to stop you though, is it?"  
Oliver's lips pursed. He trusted her; so much was obvious, and she could almost see him rationalising the sharing of this information in his head. "Anyway. No one knows who he is. He sort of looks like a politician."  
The word 'politician' sent a bristle down Martha's spine. Despite all rational thought, the first association she held with such a word was the Master. "Anything else?"  
"Apparently he had a Scottish accent," Oliver's brow tensed. "Would you like to see him? Might be up your alley. Maybe he's involved in all your top-secret shenanigans."  
The mention of an accent relaxed her greatly, anxiety dissolving and leaving only curiosity behind. "Lead the way, doctor." 

* * *

The curtain peeled back to reveal a pale, gaunt-looking man lying asleep in a stiff hospital cot. There were no machines displaying his vital signs, nor any IV solutions being routed into his bloodstream. If it wasn't for the hospital setting, he would have looked like a man nursing a nasty, but harmless, cold.  
"Has he been checked over?" Martha asked, turning her head toward Oliver.  
"I don't think so. They haven't even managed to get him in a gown yet," he gestured to the tattered suit the man seemed to swim in. "He's breathing on his own, though. I think he was just confused."  
"What did you say he was talking about?" She stepped forward, dragging her eyes across the almost-still body.  
"He was looking for someone, apparently,"  
"What's strange about that?"  
"He said she was forty-five metres tall,"   
Martha let out a short laugh. "Right. Yeah, I understand why you thought he was confused."  
"His pulse was very fast," Oliver said, recalling what the paramedics had told him. "Tried to check his sats, but..."  
"But what?"  
"Don't know. Just kept coming up as 'error'."  
"Strange," she drawled the word out, suddenly fascinated with this man.

Martha's phone rang with a high trill from her jacket pocket. "Sorry. Just a second," she smiled apologetically before briskly walking into the hallway for some semblance of privacy. "Hello?" She answered.  
"Hey. I'm at Asda," Mickey's voice spoke down the line.  
"This is my work phone," she chided. "I told you -"  
"Emergencies. Yeah. I know. This is an emergency,"  
"What's the emergency, then?" She rolled her eyes but smiled regardless.  
"D'you want chicken or cod tonight?"  
"You're unbelievable," she said, hushed. When she didn't garner a response, she forced out a quick "chicken."  
"Nice, I'll see you later," he sounded rather pleased with himself. "Love you."  
"Yeah, love you too," the dial tone indicated that he had hung up, allowing her to return to her mystery patient.

The walk back to the ward brought with it a commotion that seemed to rise in volume the closer she got to the doors.   
_"No, no, no, you've got it all wrong!_ I'm _the Doctor. Don't touch me!"_  
Martha had barely processed the words when she broke out into a run, rushing back into the large room to find a collection of disgruntled patients and two nurses doing their best to calm the man - who had been dead asleep only minutes later - down.  
He was batting away their hands frantically, ignoring their pleas to _please, sir, lie back down_ when his eyes fell on Martha.  
"You," he pointed at her. "I know you!" He shrugged off the hands of the nurses and sprung to his feet. "Donna!" He shouted triumphantly, then paused, aware of his own mistake, and went back to staring at her. "That's not right."  
"Martha,"  
"No, that's not right either. It might be," the clouds in his mind parted for a brief moment of clarity, and he smiled. "It is. Martha Jones!"  
"Who are you?" She asked hesitantly, aware that she likely already knew the answer.  
"Martha. You have to help me. I'm being followed by this furious looking man. And I keep hearing this... Noise. It's... It's... Scottish. I'm certain it's Scottish. Can you hear it?" He approached her as quick as a flash.  
"That's your voice. You're Scottish," she spoke monotonously, not quite believing the sight before her eyes.  
"Am I?" His shock was only momentary, replaced almost instantaneously with a victorious grin. "I am! That's fantastic!" He grimaced. "No. That's not my word any more."  
"Who are you, sir?" She made brief eye contact with the nurses behind him, who were staring, concerned, at the sight before them. With a flick of her head, they scattered away to attend to other patients. "Are you...?"  
"Oh, Martha Jones. You must know who I am," he sounded exasperated, offsetting the manic energy in a manner that was almost uncomfortable. "Are we going to have to do the whole charade again?" He winced in thought. "Ah!" His hands rose to his neck. "Like so," with shaking fingers, he untied the singed tie around his collar and held it in front of her. "See?"  
"Oh my god," the vision in front of Martha was an almost exact recreation of her first, confusing meeting with the Doctor. "Doctor?"  
"Yes!" He clapped his hands.  
"You've changed," she pointed out rather bluntly. "What happened?"  
"I died," his brows came together in an intense frown.  
"What?" She reeled back. Her work with UNIT had told her most of what she needed to know about the cycle of regeneration, but the theory was far different from the practice. "When?"  
"A few hours ago. Or days. A few hundred years in the future. It's all very complicated,"  
"Are you okay?" She asked, attempting not to sound as frantic as she was.   
"Am I -" he stared at her as though she had done something despicable right in front of his eyes. "Am I okay? Of course I'm okay!"  
"You fainted in the middle of London,"  
"I was taking a break," he rolled his eyes. "I've been awake for a thousand years. I deserve a cat nap if I want. I died, okay? I'm still a bit drowsy from the whole thing."  
"Okay!" She reeled at his confrontation.  
"What are you doing here, anyway?" He spun on the spot theatrically. "I put a word in for you at UNIT. You should be defending the Earth against the more boring aliens."  
"I'm on a break," she responded defensively. "That was you, then?"  
"Of course it was me! I cared about you a lot, you know," he stabbed at his chest.  
"Yeah, you were great at showing it," her words dripped with a certain sarcasm, but once they were out, she flinched as though surprised at her own outburst. "Sorry. I didn't mean that."  
"Of course you meant it. You wouldn't have said it if you didn't mean it," he softened a little, as though he was suddenly aware of the situation at hand. "I should go. I've lost a T-Rex."  
"Is that what you were talking about earlier?" She laughed. "Did you say it was forty-five metres tall?"   
"Yes," he nodded.  
"When I was in school, they told us that they were only six metres tall," she pointed out, folding her arms.  
"Oh! And you're the expert on prehistoric beings, are you?" His eyes widened. "I'm sorry, I should have consulted you before I popped to the Jurassic era and saw it with my own two eyes! Called you up and said 'sorry, Martha, I'm being chased by a forty-five-metre tall Tyrannosaur, could you tell me if that's realistic?'"  
She laughed, shocked. "Would you like a cup of tea?"

* * *

"This is disgusting," the Doctor said. The disposable cup from the hospital's meagre cafe looked tiny in comparison to his large hands. "What do they put in the teabags here? Dirt? They expect people to get better drinking this weak tripe?"  
"I think the focus is more on the medicine," she had ordered herself a black coffee which, admittedly, was just as disgusting.   
"Tea _is_ medicine," he drank and grimaced at the taste. "Tea once healed my synapses when I was recovering from a bumpy regeneration. If I'd had some of this, I think my synapses would have gone on strike."   
Once she had chuckled politely, her eyes seemed to cloud a little.  
"What are you doing?" He blinked a few times. "What is that?"  
"I'm just thinking,"  
"It doesn't suit you. You look like an elderly cat," he breathed in sharply. "What were you thinking about?"  
"The last time I saw you," she said softly. "The Sontaran. Do you remember?"  
"Of course I remember," his abrasive tone had calmed, and he pursed his lips in thought. "I was saying goodbye."  
"I figured that out,"  
"You don't work for UNIT anymore, do you?"  
"No," she admitted. "Sorry. I thought you'd be disappointed."  
"Not disappointed, no," he waved his hand dismissively. "I expected it. You weren't the type."  
"The type?"  
"You're..." He scrunched his face up in thought. "I can't imagine you with a commanding officer."  
"Right," she smiled, aware of the awkward energy around them.  
"You got married," he pointed out the ring on the hand clutching the cup.  
"To Mickey," she nodded. "We had a lot in common."  
"Me?"  
"Being second best," she said the words quickly, struggling with the words.  
"To who?" He asked obliviously. When she cast him a knowing look, he raised his eyebrows. "You were never second best, Martha Jones."  
"It felt like I was," she averted her gaze. "I don't know. I'm over it. It's been years, but we bonded over it."  
"I'm sorry if I made you feel like that," he said solemnly. "I'm sorry if I didn't appreciate you enough."  
"Don't apologise," she smiled through pursed lips. "You showed me things I never could have imagined. You were trying to heal."  
"I still want to smack myself sometimes," he grimaced. "But I'm glad you're happy. You deserve that."  
"Yeah, I do,"   
"Good," he nodded at her. "It's good you know that."

A silence fell between them, and when the Doctor looked down at the contents of his cup, he found it was empty. "That went quickly," he pointed out.  
"You look better. Maybe you were right about it being medicine,"  
"I don't think that's down to the tea," he said wryly. "I should leave. I don't know what I was thinking, dressing like this for so long, but I think it's time I found some new clothes." As he spoke, he stood up.  
"It was good to see you," she said.  
"The pleasure was all mine," he replied. "You could come with me, if you wanted to."  
"No," she sounded sure of herself. "Mickey's cooking tonight. I wouldn't miss that for all the stars in the sky."  
"It's a time machine," he reminded her, but she shook her head.  
"I've missed you, Doctor, but I'm not that person anymore,"   
"No," he frowned. "Neither am I." With that, he began to walk toward the exit. Before he left, he called "I'll see you soon."  
"If you remember," she replied.

"Martha Jones, the woman who walked the Earth; how could I ever forget you?" He said softly, sure that she wouldn't hear him, and left.

  
When he disappeared from sight, she smiled to herself, straightened her jacket, and picked up her phone, dialling Mickey.  
"What exactly are we having _with_ the chicken?"


End file.
